Category: Success Stories ¤
Author: Sue Ailsby ¤
Title: A Crateful of Teeth ¤
OK, OK, remember, this was PRE-clicker, my moment of being hit by the
lightning bolt, after I had given up "obedience training" but before I had
any idea of what was going to replace it. I am, in Canada, the grandma of
Giant Schnauzers, and am frequently called upon to answer questions and
help people out with Giant problems. Some friends were getting a divorce,
and the tension in the household had driven their 15-mo homebred puppy
bitch quite out of her mind. They called to tell me that they had taken
her to a show but couldn't show her because she was in the crate and no
one could get her out (a pro handler later told me he had looked in the
crate from quite a ways back, and "there was nothing in THAT crate but BIG
TEETH and LOTS OF THEM"). The put the crate on a plane, and I picked it
up at the airport and deposited it in my living room. They were right,
there was a lot of movin' and shakin' going on in there, and none of it
friendly. I couldn't think of anything else to do, so I opened the crate
door and sat quickly down on the couch (see, I've been a Couch Trainer for
a LOOOOOONG time!) with a broom to fend her off if necessary. She sat in
the crate and snarled and snapped for a very long time, and when she
finally slowed down a little, (sheer luck, had NO idea what I was doing),
I whispered "yes" and tossed a bit of hot dog in the crate, which caused
another round of snarling and snapping and teeth hanging out all over the
place. It took her three hours to actually pick up the first piece, and
another hour to cross the 10' between the crate and my lap. For the rest
of the day, I just kept her with me with a leash, saying "yes" when she
did something reasonable and ignoring her or walking away when she was
less than reasonable. By the following evening, she had settled down
beautifully and seemed to believe that I was capable of controlling the
universe without her worrying about it or helping. I took her and another
Giant to a training building, and handed the leash to a trusted friend
while I worked the other dog. The bitch was a bit leery, but seemed able
to respond reasonably. I told my friend to ignore her, and offer her a
bit of hot dog once in a while. Everything was going well until someone
else showed up, a dog barked, she jumped back and pulled the leash out of
my friend's hand and darted out the door. Sue Ailsby, Professional Dog
Trainer - motto: I can kill anything in less than 24 hours! As I ran out
the door, I saw her standing in the middle of the street, up on her
toenails, pupils dilated, daring someone to breath and she would be GONE -
a black dog in the middle of a strange city in the middle of the night,
and no one would EVER catch her. Still not having a clue what I was
doing, I started saying "yes" quietly, and pretending I had a hot dog.
The third time I said it, I saw her pupils constrict. The fourth time,
she looked around as if she had just woken up, gave herself a little
shake, and trotted over to me with a shaky little "Gosh, this is
embarassing, out in the middle of the street! Let's go back inside!".
When I got home, I was telling my surgeon husband what happened, and said
"It was totally amazing - it was as if someone had shot her with a
tranquilizing dart. One moment she was freaked out of her mind, the next
moment she was totally relaxed!" And he replied "You really don't know
what happened, do you?! You taught her a word which forced her to think
about food. When she was thinking about food, she was not physically
capable of producing adrenalin. When she stopped producing adrenalin, she
stopped being afraid." This led to my vision of the big red button I
could "install" in the dog's forehead by pairing the "click" to the food,
then when the dog was approaching a situation where it was about to be
afraid, or angry, or hysterically excited, I could "reach out and push the
button" and short-circuit the whole event by simply saying "yes" and
making the dog think about food. This idea of using the dog's body FOR me
was so earth-shattering for me, I have difficulty talking about it. It
led quickly to the realization that as a J&P trainer, I spent all my time
using the dog's body AGAINST me - teach the dog to sit by pushing down,
thus forcing the dog to push back against me. Would it not be more
sensible to teach the dog to STAND by pushing down? YES! Teach the dog
to come by pulling it toward me? No! Teach the dog to come by PUSHING IT
AWAY! Understand, at this point my entire world is shattering in little
pieces around me, but I'm too excited to stop. I start to shiver just
thinking about this. I was a J&P trainer for 25 years! So what started
me on The Path was my dear departed Spider and her teeth in that crate.
She stayed with me, by the way, and showed me many other things once we
started in the right direction.
Sue eh? (shivering)